Web Application Development | Click Consulting

The Click Consulting Web Development department specializes in “Web Site” and “Web Application” development. This reveals one of the most frequently asked questions; what is the difference between a “web site” and a “web application”?

A web “site” is typically a public site on the internet that contains information about the company. A simple website can be compared to a company brochure in the sense that it is visually pleasing, contains information about the company and the products or services they provide.

A web “application” is typically an engine to help run the company. Although web applications are accessed through a web browser (just as a web site is accessed), web application’s typically have interactive functionality designed to make a business process easier and more user friendly. A web application can be compared to a regular computer application like Microsoft Word or Excel, however web applications are usually created to implement business procedures and rules that cannot be enforced in existing PC applications.

Another analogy for a web site and a web application could be an office building. Where the building itself, the lobby and the receptionist are all designed to be visually attractive and promote the company to the public. This is like the web site. Behind the lobby you have the actual offices, where the actual work takes place. Here you have multiple departments communicating with each other, storing data the company collects and generating reports that can be used to make educated business decisions. This is the purpose of a web application, to create business rules and guides to assist the workers in their day to day tasks, to collect data and generate reports all at the click of a button.

Chances are you have been using web applications for some time. An online store (shopping cart) is an example of a “public” web application. The public face of an online store has a store front for you to browse products, but it also has back end ordering, processing & invoicing functionality that you might not be aware of from the public side of the site. Web applications are commonly part of an intranet and not available to the public to ensure that the information contained in the application is protected. There are many advantages to a web application over an installed PC application, which is why many believe that web applications are wave of the future when it comes to conducting business. Web applications can be accessed from all over the world, the data is real-time, there are no special hardware requirements (if you can access the internet you can access a web application), you can access it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to name a few.

In my experience as a web programmer, the biggest complement I received was when I was told that one of my applications saved someone over a day’s worth of work. That is after all the job of the application, to make the tasks easier and more productive. Now that you know what a web application is, think about all those annoying tasks that you do in your job and ask yourself if a web application could be the answer to your problem. It has been successful for many of our clients and it could be successful for you too.